Manufactured homes, such as mobile homes, trailers, prefabricated houses, and the like are manufactured at a central manufacturing site and, upon completion, are moved to a location where they will be permanently located. Because the home is designed to be easily moved from the manufacturing site to the permanent location, it is not initially built upon a permanent foundation, but rather is constructed upon a pair of parallel I-beam joists. The manufactured home is then transported to the installation site where the home will be mounted upon piers formed from concrete blocks, pilings, or stabilizing jacks.
Since the manufactured home will, from time to time, be exposed to strong wind forces and/or geological phenomena such as ground tremors, it is important that the home be anchored in position on the piers. Typically, stabilization systems are used to secure the home in place and prevent the home from being shifted off of its piers by the forces to which it is subjected. In a common type of stabilization system, soil anchors having shafts with one or more helical plates at the bottom of the shafts are drilled into the ground until only their heads remain above ground. Cold rolled steel straps or bands are installed as diagonal tics that extend from each anchor head to the lower framework of the manufactured home. The straps or bands are tightened at the anchor head to take up the slack in the straps and to apply tension thereto so as to secure the home in place atop its piers.
When anchor and strap systems such as that described above are used, the straps must be loaded in an appropriate amount of tension. To ensure that the stabilizing system has been installed under the correct amount of force, the tension in each of the straps should be measured. The most common way to measure tension in a strap such as those used in these systems is with a strain gauge. In that providing each strap with its own strain gauge would be physically and economically impractical, alternative measurement means are needed. Accordingly, it can be appreciated that it would be desirable to have a device which permits simple measuring of the tension in the straps after the straps have been installed in the stabilization system.